


An Average Day

by VelvetSky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Walks In The Park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 14:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14380461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelvetSky/pseuds/VelvetSky
Summary: Sometimes average is hard to get with the Avengers. Sam and Darcy have a nice, average day out, together.





	An Average Day

**Author's Note:**

> For my Blogversary fics. This one is for @shespeakslatin. I hope you like it! :)
> 
> The prompt: Heylooo! For the prompt I wanted to ask if you could write Sam/Darcy? Smut is definitely okay :) I love the idea of them bonding over being tourists in NY, but every time they plan something it's cancelled over an Avengers or science emergency.
> 
> A/N: I’ve only used Sam as a kind of support character, and haven’t shipped him with Darcy before, so hopefully this came out well.

The Tower was a big place, and New York City was an even bigger place. Though working at The Tower, finding the time to see much of anything beyond it could be a challenge. Making friends within it was vital to maintaining sanity. At least that was Darcy's opinion on it, and early on in working there with Jane, after their return from England, she found someone else who shared that opinion, one Sam Wilson. He was close to the major players, well, one of them anyway, and like Darcy found his life revolving largely around the happenings of The Tower.

They met while having lunch in one of the lounges and started chatting about crazy experiences with superheroes. By the end of lunch they decided on the same time, same place at the end of the week, since he was going to be out of town a few days, helping out Steve. The next lunch they got into talking about all the things in New York they still hadn't gotten around to doing, after a couple of months of being there. A few weeks passed that way, having lunch most days, talking about the city and life and superheroes. They mused about going and checking out the city sometime, but loose plans kept falling through. The only outings they managed were the two times Darcy dropped by the VA to check out Sam's other job and they wandered back to the Tower together. Both times it was late in the day, and the idea of doing anything other than going back to The Tower and flopping down on a couch sounded like too much.

It was a random Saturday morning in May when Darcy wandered into the lounge for her second cup of coffee that morning, and Sam was reading a paper, sipping his coffee with his feet up, that they decided it was the perfect day to get out of The Tower. They got changed to go out, and met downstairs, without a further game plan. The simple feeling of not having anything to do seemed to put a smile on both their faces.

"This almost feels normal." Sam chuckled.

Darcy laughed a little too. "Normal is a weird concept these days."

"Anything in particular you're itching to see?" They had started wandering west on East 45th.

"I think I'm just happy to be outside." Lately, Darcy had felt like the only time she was outside was when she was going to or from someplace, and there was never time to just enjoy being outside.

"I'm with you there. Maybe we could head north to Central Park. Keep being outside." The idea was appealing to Sam. He hadn't been to Central Park in ages, he remembered it was big, and almost made him forget he was in the middle of the city, but that was about all he could recall.

"Oh, that sounds nice!" Darcy bounced slightly before curling her hand around Sam's elbow, garnering a smile from him when she did.

The more blocks they put between them and The Tower, the more they both started feeling like just two normal people wandering New York City to see the sights. They mused about what Rockefeller Center looked like at Christmas time, and Sam seemed to know a number of facts about the St. Patrick's Church, that he mentioned as they walked by it. That rolled into a debate over the pros and cons of all the chaos and people in the city, it seemed a draw in the end, as they headed into Central Park.

Being a sunny, spring day, and a Saturday at that, the park was fairly active, but that gave them things to look at and talk about. They found an empty stretch of benches by The Lake to sit down. People passed by, but is seemed most didn't stop to sit, so they felt like they had a little space to themselves.

"This is definitely nice. We should try to do this again, sometime." Sam wasn't completely sure what he was feeling, but it felt nice, whatever it was. Even nicer, now that they had some air and space away from the chaos that so often surrounded life at The Tower, as he stretched his arms out along the back of the bench.

"I agree. It's really easy to get sucked into that world, and almost forget there's life out here, beyond the crazy." They both laughed a little, and Darcy smiled a little longer, pulling her legs up to sit cross legged on the bench. "Sometimes it gets strange being the average folks in that place."

"Hey, I'm not average, and neither are you." Sam wasn't sure if she was disparaging herself with that comment. Sometimes her sarcasm got so dry, it got hard to tell if she was joking or serious, but he kind of liked that about her.

"Maybe not, but comparatively." She was smiling, it wasn't so much a joke, but she wasn't down on herself either. It just seemed that compared to the Janes, and Tonys, and Steves, she and Sam were the average folks.

"True, it is kind of next level there. I still walk in there and feel a little floored sometimes." Nodding a little, Sam had to admit he felt that way too, walking around The Tower.

"We probably should try harder to make time to be average, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's probably good for the psyche." Darcy laughed a little, her focus mostly on him, though they both took the occasionally visual sweep of their surroundings. She did so, not because she expected anything, but simply habit to keep aware of her surroundings, and because those surroundings happened to be nice to look at, sitting in the park.

"I'd have to agree with that." Sam was happy with the mellow life, though he couldn't say he didn't enjoy a little more action sometimes as well. He didn't need it as much as some people. He suspected there were several in The Tower who needed it. He understood that, but he honestly was okay without it.

"So, where did you learn all that stuff about the St. Patrick's Cathedral?" Darcy couldn't help the curiosity.

"My father was a minister in Harlem, he knew folks in all the churches in the city, it seemed, and knew all kinds of facts about those churches." For a moment there was a distant smile playing on Sam's lips, before it returned to his more casual and focused expression.

"You grew up in the city then?" She'd never realized that, he never really spoke of where he'd come from, though she supposed she never had either.

"Most of my childhood, yeah. Until I was about fourteen. After my dad died, my mom remarried, a dentist who lived in Westchester County. I spent high school as one of the only black kids around. I made some friends, but there were a lot of assholes." Sam shrugged a bit, looking out at the water for a moment.

Darcy was nodding, "I kind of know that feeling. The feeling a little out of place thing."

Sam looked over at her, "you do?"

"I was usually one of very few white kids in my schools, but that was kind of normal for me from the start. My parents divorced right before I started school, and after a year or so, and my dad moving halfway across the country, my mom couldn't keep affording the mortgage on her own, especially with my oldest sister in college, and the next one soon to graduate high school and also go to college. So the house in the good school district on the edge of Beverley Hills was sold, and there were a series of rentals in a variety of neighborhoods for the next six or seven years. They were all neighborhoods where being the little white girl made me automatically weird, though I'm sure my personality didn't help make me less weird." Darcy laughed a little at that, and Sam smiled and chucked just a moment. "They were all east and south LA neighborhoods. We finally settled into a place when I started middle school."

"Sounds like we should have traded schools." They both chuckled together.

"Maybe, though I doubt I'd have fit in much better in some school full of stuck up snobs. I remember a few of my sister's friends, most of them refused to even come to our house, not that my sister wanted them to come over. There were a few scary moments growing up, but we had nice neighbors, I made a few good friends, and it was mostly good memories." Darcy smiled, with a shrug.

Sam laughed. "I think I'd have to agree. Harlem was a rough place at times. It's how my dad died, but I think I felt more at home there, than when we moved. But I suppose we take the experiences we're handed, and how we deal with them, shapes who we are."

"Very true. Maybe it's those sorts of things that make adjusting to a world with beings from other realms, and super powers, and those kinds of things, a little bit easier." Darcy had been a bit floored by it all, especially in New Mexico. By London she supposed she was a little more used to it by then.

"Maybe. I'm sure it doesn't hurt. Makes you ready to react, and adjust fast." Sam probably owed his ability to cope with things to his years in the military, but then, he'd found coping with military life had perhaps been aided by the way he grew up. He reacted fast and calm to most things. And had faced loss before, not that it had made losing Riley any easier, but it had helped him realize the need to find tools to cope with it.

They were sitting close, Sam's arm around the back of the bench behind her, and they were smiling at one another. Soaking a bit in the warmth of the day and each other.

"This definitely feels like the kind of thing we should be making a point to do more often. Getting out, without the extra crazy, and just taking in the city. Of course, now I know, you know the place." Darcy hadn't realized from any of their earlier conversations that he lived in New York before.

"I feel like I don't really, anymore. It's changed a lot since I was a kid. The whole city has cleaned up since then. Back in the 80s and early 90s, New York was a rougher place." Sam had walked around his old neighborhood not long after arriving in New York, it was perhaps the only time, before this, that he'd made to simply go out and spend a day out and about the city that wasn't just getting from home to work of some sort.

"I think that was true of most big cities. LA is like that too. Just in the time I was growing up, from the time we started moving around East and South Los Angeles neighborhoods in the early 90s, to when we settled down into a place just south of The 10, around 2000, the place was starting to try to clean up and become safer for the families that lived there. Every time I visit, I feel like it's evolved a little more. It's kind of a nice place now. It's an older neighborhood, in terms of the homes, so it's got character." Darcy had shifted so her whole body tilted toward Sam. "I guess it means we could try discovering the city as it is now, together."

"We definitely could. I've let myself get so sucked into working, even when I'm not chasing something with Steve, I'm at the VA, just to keep busy. Sometimes a day to wander the city is good for the soul. I remember my father saying that." Sam grinned just a bit.

"Whenever you're free, just text me, and unless I'm out of town with Jane, or she's literally on the verge of a breakthrough, I'll tell her I have to go. Cause, knowing you, it'll maybe be once every few weeks anyway." Darcy had pretty much dropped everything to keep following Jane. She'd finished her degree via online meeting with her department advisor, since she'd really only had to do a senior project course to graduate after her internship credits went through. But, she figured since Jane had a fully stocked lab, she could make do from time to time without assistance.

"You're probably right, that's not too crazy for the sake of our sanity." He chuckled.

"And to keep us in touch with our average sides." They laughed together, again. Darcy smiled softly as Sam's hand rubbed up and down on her arm.

The few moments that followed, felt like slow motion, the lean and the slow roll of lips against one another, followed by the long stare with lazy smiles. They sat and talked a while longer before strolling the park and getting something to eat. The day was nice, and calm, and average, and it was just what they both needed in their lives.


End file.
